Front Range staple Dressy Bessy is back

Dressy Bessy, a Denver-based indie-pop band, is celebrating 20 years in 2016 with a new album and tour. (Yep Roc / Courtesy photo)

If a band is only as good as its last album, Dressy Bessy was in trouble.

The Denver indie-pop act's 2008 release Holler and Stomp sold poorly and received a conspicuous slam from the tastemakers at Pitchfork, which damned the album with a 2.8 (out of 10) rating and called it "awkward" and "weak," speculating that "it's probably time for folks to stow Dressy Bessy in the attic."

Regardless of its quality, Holler also arrived at a time when the recording industry — and the economy around it — was disintegrating. Despite a dedicated fan base and singer-guitarist Tammy Ealom's earnest belief in killer hooks and upbeat performances, the tour supporting the album tanked.

"We had been truckin' for about 10 years at that point, putting out albums every year or two and playing to more fans at bigger venues each time," Ealom said during a recent interview. "It was like, 'Whoa, what's going on?' We didn't take it personally or anything. We just realized the timing wasn't right, so we decided to take a break."

The promise of rebirth is something of a fundamental law and eternal hope in music, not an aberration, but Dressy Bessy still is taking pains to redefine itself for 2016.

The band — which was founded at the height of the Elephant 6 indie-rock collective's acclaim — released its new album, Kingsized, on Feb. 5.

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Ealom, 47, recorded the album it with Dressy Bessy guitarist John Hill (her husband), who also plays with former Denverites and Elephant 6 standard-bearers The Apples in Stereo.

After four full-lengths on the Kindercore and Transdreamer record labels, Kingsized was released by respected North Carolina imprint Yep Roc. Its buffet of roots, rock and folk artists includes good company for Dressy Bessy: Tift Merritt, Gang of Four, The Reverend Horton Heat, Sloan, Nick Lowe and Paul Weller.

National music sites Spin and Stereogum have previewed Dressy Bessy's earworm single "Lady Liberty," which is already ubiquitous on local-music radio stations and enjoyed its own 7-inch release on 2015's Black Friday Record Store Day.

Finally, the band is on a 27-date national tour behind Kingsized that will end with high-profile shows at the SXSW music conference in Austin, Texas, in mid-March, putting the band squarely in front of the critics, fans and industry folks it drifted away from over the years.

"We never completely stopped," Ealom said when confronted with term "comeback."

"I've been writing songs all these years and we put out some digital singles, but an album just hadn't come about. We were just getting by, like everybody else."

The approach of the band's 20th anniversary, however, inspired Ealom to pull together a batch of new songs that she and Hill recorded at their home studio, with drummer Craig Gilbert. Guest players such as R.E.M.'s Buck tracked their parts remotely (in his case, in a home studio in Portland, Ore.), and the band embarked on an ambitious rehearsal schedule that included up to 40 songs per session.

"I'm really pleased with the musicianship on this album," Ealom said of Kingsized, which features her trademark overstuffed lyrics and melodies that fall somewhere between scratchy bubblegum-pop and Saturday-morning TV theme songs. "It's all 100 percent genuine and performance-oriented with very little editing, and I think you can feel that."

Despite a rough go-round on its previous release, Ealom feels the band has nothing to prove. She will continue to play and promote the album as best she can (with the help of her new bassist and a longtime friend from Colorado Springs, Jeff Fuller) and hopes that people respond. She is, however, bracing for a perennial plague: the "up-and-coming band" status that's frequently applied to Dressy Bessy, despite the fact it has been around for two decades.

"We always joke about it with every release," she said. "It's fine, because then it's kind of a fresh start with each release. It doesn't get old because people haven't heard of us in the first place."

Boulder is pretty good at producing rock bands, and by "rock," we mean the in-your-face, guitar-heavy, leather-clad variety — you know, the good kind. For a prime example, look no farther than BANDITS. Full Story